Chapter Text
Everything in Auradon is so beautiful and Evie isn't sure if she's the fairest of them all anymore. The apples that she grew within have gone rotten. She had forgotten to tend to them while she was busy doing a prince's homework and baking magical cookies with Mal. It's okay she thinks Mal is just as rotten as I am.
Evie don't have her Prince Charming anymore. Her golden boy found himself a real princess. She realizes she might not need to live in a big castle anymore. Not after being trapped in a castle for the majority of her life on the Isle of The Lost. Lord knows that leaving that castle was the best damn thing to ever happen to Evie and she's never going back. She thinks everything has worked itself out. It's okay she thinks I don't need a prince, Mal will always be there to save me even if a prince won't.
Evie might have Mal but Mal has Ben. It's okay, Evie can bend and she can fold, she's so used to it already. Even if it's a tight fit, she can swallow herself up and no one will ever know otherwise. The way her mother taught her, the way she's been doing all her life. She'll stretch herself so thin that there'll be enough room for the three of them. Because if there is one thing Evie knows, it's how to make room. And she understands that some of Mal is better than none of Mal. That's all Evie needs, really, is some of Mal. Half-smiles, half-truths, half-apologies.
Evie can bend and fold but Ben cannot. It's not his fault, he doesn't know what he's doing. After all, he's a prince. He was never taught how to bend and fold. Never taught to contain himself, to fit himself in a box. And so he doesn't, he spills like an overflowing sink with no apologies and no regrets. He takes all of Mal and leaves the regrets for her.
And she regrets, and regrets, and regrets.
Mal chose goodness and so, of course, she would choose him. He's light and he's pure. He grew flowers in Mal's once rotten core. And it almost makes Evie laugh because it's so damn predicable. It's cliche and boring, and Mal would hate it. Well, Mal would have hated it if she wasn't so caught up in trying to mirror Ben and his ceaseless kindness and his caring nature.
He's sugar sweet. He reminds Evie of the frosting on the cakes she used to eat back on the isle. The cake she'd eat only to throw up and repeat because it was all she had control over back when Carlos was coming over bloody and raw with cuts and bruises. Back when Jay would coming over for a place to sleep when he didn't get enough for his father. Evie's older now but she feels more powerless now than she ever did on the Isle. At least now she has a mirror that shows her what she wants without having to skip any meals. That doesn't stop her from thinking that if she stopped eating then maybe Mal would have chosen her instead.
And that does make her laugh. It's disgusting. It's sick. But she's older now, and when she was younger she would have ate her sorrows and flushed them down the toilet. Now she pours liquor down her throat with Carlos in his room as if it could do anything to raise her heavy heart.
Evie spends more time in Carlos's room than she spends in her own. It was CarlosandEvie before it was EvieandMal and CarlosandJay anyways. It was CarlosandEvie long before it was MalandBen and JayandAudrey, that's for damn sure. Evie has a feeling that it'll always be the two of them. They were more similar to each other than they were to anyone else back on the Isle of The Lost. Both of them, with their hearts too big, too heavy for their chest. Both of them, with too many wounds still open. Both of them, with their big, worrying eyes, always wanting to help, to feel useful, adequate. And he worries, and so does she, your bodies were not meant to torn apart by the wars you wage with yourself. Your bodies are not collateral damage of the bad things that have happened in your life. But yet, still he understands. He's just trying his best to lick his wounds, same as her.
She doesn't expect anyone else to understand. She sweeps it under the rug because that's what she does best. Her mother taught her to be a phenomenal cleaner, and her feelings are messy. She pushes them down, tucks them away. It's not that hard, really, she just has to make it to the room before curfew. She just has to plaster a smile on her face and not raise any suspicions. She just has to act like everything's okay. And Evie can do that, Evie's been doing that.
So she gives up her days to schoolwork, to her perfect little charade, to counting how many smiles Mal gives her in a day and cursing the butterflies in her stomach. And the night is hers. She'll drown her demons, she'll soak them in gasoline and watch them burn underneath her skin.